Online news eclipses print media

Opinion pieces in both The Guardian and Newsday.com this week claimed that the web is becoming a more popular news source than print.

The Media Guardian published a piece by Paul Carr, editor of thefridaything.co.uk, pointing out that Heat magazine's story on Madonna's third pregnancy - which it claimed was an exclusive - had actually been published on his web site four days earlier.

Newsday.com's staff writer also penned an article looking at how 18 to 30 year-olds are now getting their news almost exclusively from the internet.

Mr Carr said: "The good news is that the traditional press can no longer pretend that the internet doesn't exist. The Mirror was recently forced to admit they'd 'borrowed' a Photoshopped image of the Argentinian football team clutching handbags from a user of B3ta.com, and the hundreds of emails we've received from Heat readers in the past week show that people do notice when a story already been broken online is claimed as an 'exclusive' in print.

"The fact that many people now turn to the internet to check the facts behind stories they read in newspapers or see on TV means that online magazines can no longer be considered the black sheep of the media family."

He adds that the move towards paid-for content is causing this shift in attitudes: people believe that if they have to pay for something it must be better quality than what they can get for free.

James T.Madore, writing for Newsday.com, claims that the changing operations of the media giants are proof that the web is winning.

"The prospect of losing an entire generation - those 18 to 34 year-olds, whose numbers rival that of the Baby Boom - has produced a whirlwind of activity at companies that once were slow to change," he says. "Gannett Co. and Knight Ridder Inc. are rolling out weekly sections filled with reviews of movies and rock bands, listings of events, gossip and attitude that are inserted into the papers and distributed for free at nightclubs, coffee houses and other youth hangouts.

"Time, Newsweek and other news magazines have beefed up their reporting on college life and social issues such as abortion rights and sexual abstinence. The TV networks and news radio stations are doing the same."

Only 33 per cent of US families led by someone age 25 to 34 bought a daily newspaper in 2001 compared with 63 per cent in 1985, according to surveys of consumer spending by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Meanwhile in recent research in the New York City metropolitan area, 80 per cent of 18 to 34 year-olds quoted the internet as their main source of news.

Sources:
http://www.newsday.com/business/ny-bzcov033114447feb03,0,1318539.story?coll=ny-business-headlines
http://www.thefridaything.co.uk
http://media.guardian.co.uk/mediaguardian/story/0,7558,892214,00.html

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